just some random thoughts:
first, I admit I am no expert.
there are 35-40 mpg cars available right now - but not enough people buy them........I have plenty of friends and family still buying Navigator Ls and the like and they don't give a rats behind what the gas costs. they don't care that by using twice as much gas as necessary they are shortening supplies and raising prices for others. I live near the Great Lakes: the average Joes have cut back on their boating in putt-putts.......the guyz with the 50 footers could care less - Filler Up !!!!
still can't figure out where all that clean, green electricity is going to come from when I plug my car in for its overnight charge.....somewhere else I guess (as long as it isn't in Teddy Kennedy's back yard).
and a hundred years from now the new "Love Canal" will be where all the old battery packs were dumped. how much does a battery replacement cost for some of those cars, anyway.
I'm an old fart: my first care was a 10 year old '56 Packard 400 (!) it weighed 5000 pounds, had a 305 hp, 374 V8, was faster than stink, huge, comfortable, safe.....and got no less than 15 mpg no matter how I drove it. My LHS gets 24-26 on the highway....and 13.5 in town.......about 3600 pounds, underpowered and slow.......progress?
it'll never happen, but the only solution is a form of rationing: everybuddy is entitled to X number of gallons at a decent price.........you can use it frugally or drive a guzzler and only go half as far......once you've used your allowance, you can buy more - and pay thru the nose for it. ir maybe a total energy allowance: let Barbra Steisand lecture us on saving energy in one of her mansions - with the heat shut off.
, btw: ethanol..... my town of 50,000 was glad to hear that we were going to get an ethanol plant (although worries about the price of corn/soy, cost to feed livestock, cost of dairy, meat etc are concerns). anyway, the City Fathers in their wisdom sold the company a bunch of land at about 5% of market value and granted tax abatements and the usual inducements to build the plant. then someone took the trouble to crunch the numbers on the proposal and learned that we don't have enough electricity, natural gas or water to run the damn thing and the ethanol it would make would be prohibitely expensive anyway and provide only a fraction of the energy it would take to make it.........then the "ethanol" company admitted they didn't have the money to build the plant anyway. but now they've got 100 acres of prime land.
........like the old Saturday Night shtick: "because you'll believe anything"